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Learning to Love Kobe Bryant

As this year made clear, none of that is true. What he is now is too great to be meaningfully despised. Is he a nice guy? Who knows? He keeps himself at an understandable remove. (One thing worth noting, though, is the $750,000 the Kobe Bryant China Fund has contributed since the earthquake. "They've always welcomed me there," he says. "So when that happened, there was no question. It was just the right thing to do.") What you now feel when you watch him on the court is that this may be the most sublime athlete you'll ever see. In the past, I've taken pleasure in two quotes, one from Phil Jackson, the Lakers' coach, and one from Tex Winter, longtime Jackson consigliere. Jackson described Kobe as "uncoachable," and Winter questioned whether Kobe had "ever listened to anyone."

"I take those comments as a compliment," Kobe said when I brought them up. "I'm not the type of guy who's going to jump over a wall just because you tell me to. I want to know the thinking behind it." Well, that's an admirable attempt to spin some negative press, I thought. And then he said, "Those guys both know how I think about the game. They know how I work. They know—" He paused here and then went on to a separate thought. It occurred to me that the point he was hovering on the lip of, I think, was that they basically know he's a genius. He just couldn't come out and say it—They know I'm as good, maybe better, than anyone who has ever played. You don't coach that.

It's true, you don't. If you're a true lover of the game, you don't fight it. You just acknowledge where it resides.